Posts Tagged 'WOW'

I like this fight because I hate it. It has an intricate ‘dance’ and a purple maze of doom. It requires the whole raid to pay attention, and beam roles are randomised, and with lingering gaze, life drain, the delicate balances of movement, and action and reaction. No one every gets to stand still and just face roll.

I know it’s not even considered challenging content to most 10 man guilds now, and it’s even supposed to be farm for us because we have killed him a few times, and been working on extended lock outs for some of the bosses further on. But it is an intricate fight, and so I hate to love it, whether I heal it or dps it and always hate to love it the most when we fail at it.

The maze though is what I find the most fascinating part of it in that it is a test of patience. Once you understand the Purple lightening on the floor to indicate the side where it is safe from the disintegration beam you are then balancing the urge to run too far past the cleared space against getting near to that beam that is edging closer and closer. The path is very random, and we get ‘good’ and
‘bad’ paths, the good ones, are easy enough to follow, don’t hug the boss too close, and create enough space to allow better for our lag. The bad paths are the ones that create very little space to shuffle round the Eyes bulbous body and great beam of destruction. Its also one thing to watch where you going, but then another to then be dpsing or healing at the same time. Beam, Floor, Health bars, need to watch them all.

We had a bad run of it tonight. We were pugging two, and running one under-geared because some of our normal raid people couldn’t make it, and one of our healers had thought we wouldn’t get enough for raid, so cleared it with someone else. :( and we lost too many people to silly things, add bad internet connections, unexplained lag, and just general bad.

Of course LFR has much better survivability and I will admit that in the very early days in LFR I would ball up in my dispersion and bounce around until I found the beginnings of the safe path. 10 man is much more organised and I know what I am doing now ( most of the time )

Every time I am in the maze, even in LFR there is a voice in my head ( and sometimes in vent.. ) saying Wait.. Wait… now move….. wait… wait… now move.

Millie Watt yells: You really shouldn’t play with this stuff. Someone could get hurt.

I got to play with Millie in the wee hours of the morning when there was less of a queue. I had lots of frustration as I was having difficulty getting her down past 1000k Health.

Millie Watt yells: Look at you! HAH!

So I tweaked a little, Healed a LFR and got 483 Dagger, paid 6.5k for the Jade Spirit Enchant, and got the best Bracer enchant. Was getting her to 600k

Tweaked some more, Reforged more of my Mastery to Haste, replaced the gem in helm to the +crit effect ( was using helm for heals and dps so had the +mana) and reforged some spirit into haste as I didn’t need the extra hit.

I committed my gear to a dps spec. Rather I did all the stuff I should have done if I had been raiding as pure dps instead of the Heals switching I am doing with the casual guild I occasionally raid with.

I kept hitting the timer with 200-400k health left. I was getting close, and it’s so easy to panic. I finally killed her. The things that helped me was shuffling enough of a distance as soon as dynamite was thrown, and so taking less damage. resisting the urge to shield or disperse when she casts Discombobumorphanator as this only absorbs the damage your meant to take to break the stun., and trying to use my insta casts while standing in the field rather than just standing there waiting for it to happen and then moving quickly out of it.

Fears when your standing close to help reduce some of the constant damage she does, but even then, it doesn’t really interrupt her casting too much, and you run the risk of moving too far away from the lightning fields repositioning yourself.

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I’ve done a fair bit of upgrading and tweaking since starting the Brawlers guild, and my Ilevel is now 483 I had to really think about ways of optimizing when I could dps. ( and hope for good Crits ) I think so far that there has been plenty of opportunity to put out the DPS required, it’s just a matter of optimizing the time you have, even if it means not stopping and healing your self, and reducing your movement too much.

There is a thread on the EU wow forums about the disappointment that the Brawlers guild is a gear check mainly because there is a timer – 2 min for each fight, and Pvp geared people, and non top geared raiders will have difficulty beating it. ( except Proboskus which is only 60 sec ) and it does get to a point where gear is required to beat the timer. I am struggling at Rank 5 with the gear I have with some of the DPS timers, no tier, and bits I’ve upgraded or crafted & LFR stuff, but that has made me work smarter. Currently up to the 4th Gladiator at level 5 which are 5 little gnomes ( currently only killing 4 of them )

Some fights are easier for some classes, I got stumped for what would be considered an interrupt on Proboskus – Silence Durrr… I’m not used to thinking in terms of interrupts outside my fears, and they don’t form part of my normal rotation – and silence is pretty much useless on any raid boss, so it’s more of a PVP use mentality, whereas a melee class may have several interrupts to choose from,

My self-heal abilities as a shadow priest means I can worry a little less about taking some damage, and some Gladiators like Millie do a constant stream of damage, we have Devouring Plague, Vampiric Embrace, Renew, Praying of Mending Halo, that will give self-healing back with little interruption to dps

Every Brawl is a dance, some are easier than others. Some you learn to stand there and take the damage, others you need to learn when to move.

I learned to dance Deeken style. He is the last Gladiator of Rank 4 and I had some issues trying to stand still long enough to do damage, while jumping around enough to avoid the static that does random patterns on the floor. So I was going along with trying to increase the time where I didn’t have to avoid the field. So I kept him locked up on spawn as much as possible

Prepot Potion of Brawlers Cunning the Intell + 4k for 25 sec pot ( get it from Quackenbush – The Brawlers Guild Quartermaster)

Run to centre where he spawns. Fear him on spawn,

SWP MB – Psychic Horror before he can do a push back.

MF MF ….

Then it becomes a massive mess of static electricity and a stupid robot pushing you back into that static electricity at the worst of times. Some attempts went really bad. He would push back and interrupt my spells at the worst time.

You can jump over the fields, but I found that It worked better if I danced around them, moved between their ups and downs, and sideways.

The Static hits you for around 90k damage each wave. Some waves overlap each other and can smash you down quickly and thus ended a couple of attempts. I even tried taking a wave or two to get more dps out. Running around, avoiding the static electricity with only SWP and SWD on insta cast hoping to get lucky mindspike procs won’t get him down in enough time.

I found he got immune to my fears eventually, or he resisted them, when I did try to CC it was more to reduce his push backs then reduce the damage he would do in melee, which wasnt much, you spend more time worrying about the waves then him.

Towards the end of the timer there is a pause where it seems that all the Static resets and the floor clears, when I finally killed him I did that then, free space to breath and smash him as hard as you can. By that time, if you haven’t already used a Brawlers Healing Potion, you should be able to use another Cunning pot.

You have been watching a few of the fights, seen some people die, seen them win.

Sold your soul on the Black Market Auction house to get an invite. ( Actually it was only 6.9k gold for me and some BMAH camping for my outbids)

Now it’s your turn. In front a crowd of your peers, fellow players from your realm and some from others, guilds big and small are here watching or waiting for their own turns. You can hear the hecklers cheering on the mobs. “GO BRUCE” they yell. Bizmo laughing at each contestants deaths

So much blood

But it all fades away when your standing the centre. Facing the grey paneled metal wall, waiting for your opponent to appear, deep in the depths of the Deep Run Tram.

You told the Bouncer at the door you were here to fight, not die – what happens if you lose?

*********

Well if you lose, your body lays near the bouncer, until you either release, or someone nice rezzes you.

There was a buff group going, and people were quite friendly, and encouraging, buffing, healing and rezzing. You keep all your buffs going in, flasks, food and other class buffs. It all helps.

There is no shame in doing what you need to survive that fight, and that means I have stopped and healed myself,

I will admit to looking up the Strat for Dippy. When he killed me. My recount showed massive damage, and basically the guides said don’t let him cast Peck So I ran around like a mad woman, dotting him up, and Shadow Word deathing him to death. The cast bar for Peck is quick and I figured I’d rather it take longer then slow down to add more dots, or even try to Mind Spike him.

I also had some issues with the Ooze dude. Blat, the first ‘Gladiator’ in Rank 3 I was able to keep away from him, dot flay, run, dot flay run kinda thing, but then I went over the timer for the fight and got the massive AOE so I had to take some more smack damage from the main Blat to get him down fast enough.

The Brawl Queues got better the later it was, I also noticed that we started getting more people from other realms as it became a shared zone. so there was always an audience.

I love that it does have this secret, grity underground club exclusivity to it. I wish I had gotten into it a little earlier. It’s been a few weeks now since the Patch and these were the stats on the brawls and if you chat to the dude called ‘Numbers’ he will tell you how bad or good its been so far.

The First number is the times the Gladiator has killed the Player, and the second number is how many times they have been killed. Apparently its server wide stats. The fights get hard, and they look really interesting.

Deeken yells: YOU ARE BAD AND SHOULD FEEL BAD!

I stayed in the pit way too long, ( am on holidays – no bed time ) and I am writing this in between fights. Currently stuck on Ixx. 3rd fight on rank 3 I can’t run between his legs fast enough – getting better though. Using Inner Will for the 10% run speed. Standing in his hit box to escape from the AOE he casts. Tried to range it but he is too fast, and its a wide cone. Need to learn not to panic, and move too much so I stay in position, and also stop casting straight away and MOVE. I am tired though which isn’t helping.

Haven’t seen many level 5-7 fights but there has been lots of people round my level tonight, and a few 8’s. Those rank 8 fights look complicated, and I will need to read up on them, have winged it mostly so far.

Will I go all the way to level 8? Will I hand over for free the Brawlers Pass I will earn at level 7. ( friends.. what friends… ) I can make a decent chunk of gold if I do it soon ( 20k the invite was for on the normal AH when I checked today) It’s been fun so far, even if I am looking like a complete knob on this boss. Finally killed it. i Did it by running between his legs and hooking – so not straight out the back as his AOE comes under his legs too. ( I wasn’t hitting publish post till it was dead)

My new Fav Song at the moment is Radioactive by Imagine Dragons, and their song, as well as the clip played through my head during the brawls. Teddy bear Brawls. Did I say Teddy Bear Brawls. Oh yeah and Lazers! ( give it just past 1 min for what a real brawl is )

So we know that playing is sometimes hard work and sometimes we complete tasks that in themselves are not fun but the end goal is.

But it shouldn’t be hard work, or boring as often as doing dailys have been for me. We should be enjoying our recreational time, cavorting through fields of flowers giggling gleefully. That’s what my gaming experiences are like, aren’t yours? Either way I don’t want to come home from work, and feel like I have to do more work.

The rep grind for dailys has not been a gleeful giggle and this is the advantage to no longer seriously raiding. I don’t need to care that I haven’t maxed out my reps, and have maxed my character out as much as possible.

Klaxxi – who? Shado- Pan – Who?

Sure I have managed to now find the time to level 3 90’s, do a heap of pvp, run dungeons and even raid once a week, but the idea of spending my precious time doing the same thing, day in day out, cross multiple factions, I could have spent my play time for weeks just doing dailys and that would have made me not want to log in. Sure there is some variety in some of the quests and I will need to do Operation Shieldwall for the Trinkets , but it’s not its not how I want to play and I don’t feel the pressure that I HAVE to do them. So I will get there eventually, do the factions in small doses, enjoy the game.

But I will add my voice to the argument that the way they did the reps this xp really makes dailys a chore for me. The Tabard rep gains worked for me because I would run as heals for quicker queues, if I needed, but sometimes people obviously didn’t like being forced to do instances to gain rep, and I can understand why waiting around for a 1/2 hour dps queue means that chain running them to grind wasn’t such a great thing for them.

The idea of doing dailys on a 2nd or 3rd toon, even with tokens to increase the rep gain doesn’t appeal. I refuse to even attempt it right now, there is still too much to play, and enjoy of the content to see the same stuff over and over. I understand why they did it that way, couldn’t please the crowds with the Tabards, would be unfair if they made rep buyable for gold, at least this way with questing everyone equally earns it.

I love this series done by Kotaku Fake Gamer of the week ( not sure if there’s a US version but that’s the .au link ) It makes a mockery of gaming stock photos, and picks on every kind of fake gamer, girls, guys, old people! cyber goths and even babies.

2.I finally updated my blogroll ( Links to bloggers that haven’t been around since 2008. It was long over due ) my rss reader is very quite, but there are some bloggers, Tobold, Blessing of Kings, Big Bear Butt, Klep, Riv even, that just keep plugging away and writing, come hail, shine, rain, boredom, expansion, they keep writing, and that is all kinds of awesome. There are less and less bloggers who were around when I first started blogging about wow and that’s a little sad but its good to see the old timers being battle bloggers of a sort.

3. I’m not raiding in MOP, ( hurt me if I end up raiding after all – but I am going to try damn hard not to) I tried to not raid in Cata. This whole attempting to make sure I have a life, and follow other worthy pursuits didn’t quite work out, but I did enjoy my cata raiding, It’s very difficult to date and raid. When you are kicking someone out because you need to get on the pc to raid, or being non-committal to seeing someone because you’re not sure if that’s the night your going to kill the next big boss then priorities need a little tweaking. Dating a raider didn’t work out either.

4. I’m getting a short story published in a local anthology. Weeeeee. They are even having a book launch! ( but not until October) I was pretty happy to get in. They published a story of mine 2 /3 years ago, and I was motivated this year to enter again. I spent more time editing it ( with a friends help – who is better then I at things like grammar ) then I did writing it. But I felt it was as polished as it was going to get. I still have to go to an editing workshop which I am sure it will be polished again and made even better!

Everyone’s experience in gaming is different, especially when it comes to being female and gaming apparently. Some don’t see or get any of the harassment in gaming, some see a lot. How much of that experience do we need to take our own responsibility for?

Do I put myself in positions to be harassed? – this is a dangerous question because it implies my experiences are my fault. Could I deal with situations differently? leave at the first sign of potential problems, let 1 person of 8 others in a RBG team ruin my fun, I could sequester myself under the protection of a man, or only ever do anything in-game with a guild. I fly solo a fair bit, does flying solo in a gaming world expose you to more of these issues?

We know in history, and societies, past and present that lone women are considered fair game, and if you’re not under the protection of playing with guild people, or a partner, or a group of friends, and maybe you want to do RBG’s and no one else wants to, or take an alt to a GDKP because there is gold to be made, and gear to be got. Or take along your own personal knight to protect you, then by refusing to go out into the great unwashed masses are you missing out, or just putting yourself behind a protective wall.

We also have to consider that maybe the bad stories about Girl gamers experiences are over represented, we don’t get to hear the guys side – we dont seem to ask what kind of abuse they cop, or how they deal with it, are there things that they inflict upon each other in whispers we don’t see and can’t talk about because of a Bro code, or do most of their experiences just add up to someone being a d*ck

Some commentors on my last post indicated that female leadership can also creates a toxic playing environment, and yes Women can be petty and bitchy but there seems to be a big difference between how the sexes deal out, and deal with harassment in-game.

Men seem likely to have their sexuality, or masculinity questioned, or have violence threatened. I don’t think I have ever heard a guy been threatened with sexual violence or submission though. That would be ‘gay’ I also don’t think they have ever been told to ” Get in the backyard you yob and mow the lawn” in-game either, and I have never heard a female gamer threaten another with sexual violence.

Gamer guys are subjected to stereotypes though, and I will admit to laughing along to the living at home in your mums basement stereotype. Women don’t seem to get that implied insult. However, generation X and generation Y are taking longer and longer to move out of their parents homes – more likely to get married later. It could actually be true for a lot of people.

In a BG the other day because I notified the BG that ‘such and such’ was hiding afk in a hut – he said ” I’m on the phone. I have a life, not like you who don’t work and play wow all day” It was an interesting attack, I noticed because I was trying to heal him and it was the first 30 sec on the bg, and were on the WW offensive, and he wasn’t in line of sight. But because he is afk, hiding, and was caught out, I therefore must have no job and play wow all day, and he doesn’t so he is better than me.

Kind of a lame attack. It was Sunday and wasn’t true, and got a good LOL from the BG when he left or was successfully kicked, but that kind of insulting, heckling even, is gender neutral insult. Scrub, Noob, Fail. Loser, nerd ( yes you can be called nerd in game by someone playing a game ) it’s easier not to take that personally.

Often the Harassment directed at women threatens our personal safety or seeks to abuse us. Maybe our reactions, how personal we take it would change if the harassment was more gender neutral, and didn’t make us feel exposed or vulnerable, but

Sometimes reacting to gender directed Harassment makes it worse. While waiting for it to fill a RBG another player kept standing on my character in his frog suit, and I kept moving away, and a discussion began along the lines of ” Don’t you like my frog suit.. and at this point I was on vent and said, ‘not really’

“But bitches like frogs”

and I responded something like ” Well I’m not a bitch, and I do not like your frog suit” Every reference to females then on was about ‘bitches’ If I had stayed silent, mounted up and flow away I may not have had to listen to the tirade that followed. Bitches can’t heal, Bitches can’t play…

One of the arguments defending bully’s in general is that people are too soft, and just need to learn how to deal and I’ve thought about how I react to some situations, do I antagonize the offenders, could I handle it differently. Am I acting with integrity. I already think I leave and abandon places too often because I think I am doing the right thing, and saying nothing would probably do more damage to my own psyche if I found myself being attacked. I wasn’t brought up meek, the rest of my life relies on my not being meek, and I will not play meek.

However could we deal with it better than providing screen shots of the abuse, voice clips or sharing stories. I don’t think anyone can say that it doesn’t ever happen, and we know we need to change it, and awareness seems to be the first step.

If we met cuss for cuss, insult with insult, threatened to cut their balls off and feed them to them one at a time if they ever so much breathed another word – would the harassment stop, or would they only be encouraged with greater, more personal threats,

If you were to do a scale of experiences of good and bad in-game. The bad is just flotsam floating in a sea of goodness, as corny as it sounds. I think as often as the risk of playing with strangers brings, most of the time there is no issue. I don’t think Wow society has gone to the dogs. Different people do different things, and have different experiences. Maybe one of the biggest differences is I have chronicled mine, in a blog, much like a Wow diary where they would not be as important, or memorable if I hadn’t of recorded them.

I also don’t think I have presented many original ideas or thoughts here, but I’m writing again.